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Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Originally Posted by Shas

What I see are two different, but related, issues where the NCAA may have an obligation to investigate and possibly discipline the PSU athletic program. For all the horror of the Sandusky revelations, it may actually be the latter issue that gives the NCAA it's way into this mess.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Those "four key questions", submitted to the university in November of 2011, sound a lot like your "to start an investigation" questions, Shas.

Yep. The NCAA plays by the book. The fact that the quote you provided contains the phrase "ethics policies" suggests to me that this is their way in. If the NCAA's book has rules in place for proper ethical behavior of players and coaches, and expectations that each university itself has rules in place be for making sure that sort of behavior is adhered to or punished, then this is where the program could run afoul of the NCAA specifically.

They will ask, were our ethical standards violated? And, Did PSU have the rules in place to prevent this? And if so, were the rules ignored or purposely bent? It sounds a heck of a lot like the head football coach went out of his way to repeatedly bend rules to assure ethical misbehavior by Sandusky and by players was allowed to go unpunished, for fear that it would damage the team, albeit not in direct scoreboard or recruiting terms.

I'm now assuming, until I hear otherwise, that their "ethical policies" are going to relate to the sort of stuff Paterno covered up vis-a-vis Sandusky and his players. No one is even talking about the odd statements Paterno made back in 2006 where he defended his linebacker A. J. Nicholson after sexual assault charges were made against the player. So it's not even an isolated incident or two we're talking about. It's a cultural lack of institutional control over the coach's desire to cover-up misconduct within the ranks.

What I am seeing when I look at this story is a FOOTBALL COACH who broke rules the protect FOOTBALL PLAYERS and to protect an assistant FOOTBALL COACH -- and leaders at the highest level of the school allowed it to continue like that for years because the FOOTBALL TEAM was more important than anything else.

But this isn't really about FOOTBALL, I hear?

Again, for those arguing that this is a non-football issue because it wasn't about cheating to win games or gain recruits -- that is fine to hold that opinion about what the NCAA should be concerned with -- but the truth, we'll learn, is that the NCAA's interests are much larger.

Even if the NCAA chooses not to pursue it, my opinion is that the football team need does need to suffer. It is about punishment. PSU does need to become the poster child for universities that allow a football-first, football-above-everything else culture to persist.

Read Reilly's piece. 25 years ago he was dismissive of the idea that the football program needed to be reigned in, not sainted. He figured that only sports-hating geeks complained about football. Looks like Reilly finds gets it, 25 years later.

For those still arguing it is not about football, I can't help but recall one of the last comments Paterno made about the scandal before he died, in a letter to CNN, when he wrote:

"This is not a football scandal and should not be treated as one. It is not an academic scandal and does not in any way tarnish the hard-earned and well-deserved academic reputation of Penn State."

In one sense, Paterno is right: What Sandusky did was solely a personal scandal, and he was appropriately dealt with by the criminal justice system.

Problem is, in making his argument to CNN, Paterno never admitted, or perhaps never understood, that the scandal included himself.

What Paterno and the leadership at PSU did in handling Sandusky (and players in other situations) was completely a football scandal. Perhaps the greatest college-athletics scandal of all time.

Therefore, the correct response in this scandal is not to simply let the boys' families sue in civil court and pronounce justice served.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Originally Posted by RavensNTerps

Sorry but that is the classic cult mentality. Had Sandusky acted alone, I'd agree with you completely that while disgusting, the program shouldn't be punished for the actions of one awful man. But the ENTIRE INSTITUTION from the molestor, to his boss, to the assistant AD, to the AD, to the president, to the board of trustees was involved in this. You can't just turn your back because 4 specific people are now gone. That's complete and utter horseshit. The problem was clearly at the institutional level. If you let the university to continue to profit after making the institutional-level decisions that they made to enable and cover up a known child molestor that's akin to if Enron was still operating because law enforcement felt bad for the secretaries and the analysts and the janitors that worked for them that had no knowledge of what their superiors were up to.

Okay, so I'm gonna take a deep breath, and calmly tell you that you have no idea what you're talking about.

First, Enron is still operating today. It's no longer "Enron" that's operating. But it's not that the executives of that company were found to have committed accounting fraud, then suddenly the entire company simply vanished off the map. The company was broken up and sold or spun off in pieces, and those pieces still operate today either on their own or as part of a bigger corporation. And while innocent people certainly got hurt and lost their jobs in that mess, a good number of them didn't. No one burned that company to the ground. Nor should they have.

And thus, suggesting that an entire program, company, whatever be burned to the ground to pay for the actions of a few simply doesn't make sense. This brings me to my second point, which is you very boldly state the "ENTIRE INSTITUTION" is guilty. Then you go on in the same sentence to talk through the five people that had a direct hand in it, and the 48 board members who lacked adequate controls to know about it. Sorry, those 53 people are nowhere close to the "entire institution." They are the major players in it, yes. However, as I noted in a previous post, the "entire institution" is made up of approximately 125,000 people (not including alumni and ex-faculty/staff, which would be another half million people), not fifty three.

When a program, institution or corporation is found to have a major aspect of corruption in its highest rankings, the answer is simply not "burn it to the ground." Such a solution is never the optimal one (assuming that the entirety of the group is not guilty, which I've never heard of for any program/institution/company with over 50 people in it). The solution is always:
- Immediately remove all direct perpetrators of crimes and/or mishandlings of power. The university has largely done this, although the fact that Spanier remains on staff is mystifying and disgusting to me.
- Bring in outside council to perform an investigation into what went wrong and make recommendations on what controls to implement. The board has done this via the Freeh report. The Freeh report was not simply a report designed to show who had what culpability in the Sandusky case. The vast majority of it focused on lack of controls at the highest levels of the institution and recommended a new set of controls that should be implemented to ensure this doesn't happen again. i.e. The university has done this.
- Begin implementing these controls, potentially going farther than recommended to ensure another incident doesn't happen again. The board has already implemented several of the recommended controls. They're a long was from completing this, but they're clearly taking it seriously.

And I never claimed I wanted to "turn my back" on anything in this matter just because Sandusky's in prison, Paterno's dead, Schultz and Curley are indicted and Spanier is no longer president. What I said was, the correct answer here is not to simply brashly state that the program should be killed, and that stating that it's disgusting that the university can continue to run a profitable program after what happened is mob mentality and not in any way a well reasoned response to the situation.

Are changes needed? Unquestionably so.

Should the program be punished? Probably. I think it should, but I can see arguments on all sides having validity, from no punishment to death penalty and every option in between.

Is the best response to burn the program down without giving it serious study and thought both as to what went wrong as well as to the ramifications of taking such actions? No, not even close.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

In one sense, Paterno is right: What Sandusky did was solely a personal scandal, and he was appropriately dealt with by the criminal justice system.

Problem is, in making his argument to CNN, Paterno never admitted, or perhaps never understood, that the scandal included himself.

I hear this argument a lot from fellow Penn State friends of mine, that it really wasn't a football scandal. It makes me hang my head.

The biggest question I ask people is, "If McQueary walked in on a highly respected biology teacher in that shower, not a highly respected ex-coach, would we have heard about this in 2001, or in 2011?" IMO, clearly the answer is "2001." i.e. Paterno, Schultz, Curley and Spanier all would have agreed to alert the proper authorities, and while ugly for the university, it would have treated the situation correctly and not have shown any sort of institutional lack of controls.

That by definition makes it a football problem. The reason they didn't alert authorities was to protect the football program. The only other argument is if you claim that they wouldn't have reported anyone (like the bio prof). But flat out, I don't believe that.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Originally Posted by psuasskicker

Okay, so I'm gonna take a deep breath, and calmly tell you that you have no idea what you're talking about.

First, Enron is still operating today. It's no longer "Enron" that's operating. But it's not that the executives of that company were found to have committed accounting fraud, then suddenly the entire company simply vanished off the map. The company was broken up and sold or spun off in pieces, and those pieces still operate today either on their own or as part of a bigger corporation. And while innocent people certainly got hurt and lost their jobs in that mess, a good number of them didn't. No one burned that company to the ground. Nor should they have.

And thus, suggesting that an entire program, company, whatever be burned to the ground to pay for the actions of a few simply doesn't make sense. This brings me to my second point, which is you very boldly state the "ENTIRE INSTITUTION" is guilty. Then you go on in the same sentence to talk through the five people that had a direct hand in it, and the 48 board members who lacked adequate controls to know about it. Sorry, those 53 people are nowhere close to the "entire institution." They are the major players in it, yes. However, as I noted in a previous post, the "entire institution" is made up of approximately 125,000 people (not including alumni and ex-faculty/staff, which would be another half million people), not fifty three.

When a program, institution or corporation is found to have a major aspect of corruption in its highest rankings, the answer is simply not "burn it to the ground." Such a solution is never the optimal one (assuming that the entirety of the group is not guilty, which I've never heard of for any program/institution/company with over 50 people in it). The solution is always:
- Immediately remove all direct perpetrators of crimes and/or mishandlings of power. The university has largely done this, although the fact that Spanier remains on staff is mystifying and disgusting to me.
- Bring in outside council to perform an investigation into what went wrong and make recommendations on what controls to implement. The board has done this via the Freeh report. The Freeh report was not simply a report designed to show who had what culpability in the Sandusky case. The vast majority of it focused on lack of controls at the highest levels of the institution and recommended a new set of controls that should be implemented to ensure this doesn't happen again. i.e. The university has done this.
- Begin implementing these controls, potentially going farther than recommended to ensure another incident doesn't happen again. The board has already implemented several of the recommended controls. They're a long was from completing this, but they're clearly taking it seriously.

And I never claimed I wanted to "turn my back" on anything in this matter just because Sandusky's in prison, Paterno's dead, Schultz and Curley are indicted and Spanier is no longer president. What I said was, the correct answer here is not to simply brashly state that the program should be killed, and that stating that it's disgusting that the university can continue to run a profitable program after what happened is mob mentality and not in any way a well reasoned response to the situation.

Are changes needed? Unquestionably so.

Should the program be punished? Probably. I think it should, but I can see arguments on all sides having validity, from no punishment to death penalty and every option in between.

Is the best response to burn the program down without giving it serious study and thought both as to what went wrong as well as to the ramifications of taking such actions? No, not even close.

- C -

There are simply some PSU fans like yourself that will never rationally see the forest from the trees, unfortunately, which is reason enough to disband the football program for at least one season.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

One other point folks... Please stop claiming that I'm advocating that since Paterno, Schultz, Curley and Spanier have been fired from their respective positions that I'm advocating nothing else happen to the school. If you actually read what I'm writing, you know that's not even close to accurate.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Originally Posted by psuasskicker

OFirst, Enron is still operating today. It's no longer "Enron" that's operating. But it's not that the executives of that company were found to have committed accounting fraud, then suddenly the entire company simply vanished off the map. The company was broken up and sold or spun off in pieces, and those pieces still operate today either on their own or as part of a bigger corporation. And while innocent people certainly got hurt and lost their jobs in that mess, a good number of them didn't. No one burned that company to the ground. Nor should they have

That's not accurate.

Enron become a liquidation company, selling off it's parts to other companies to settle the bankruptcy claim. Enron no longer exists and is most certainly was "burned to the ground", thanks to the volume of pay outs.

I think you're parsing words when it comes to the claim "the entire institution is guilty". Nobody thinks the Bio-101 professor is guilty and should suffer directly. But when there are STILL people getting paid (sans Paterno, for obvious reasons) even though PSU is claiming the bad seeds have been removed, it's hard to argue anything other than the university, as an institution, is still doing the dirty deed of covering, ducking and jiving their way out of something of their own creation.

So yes, the entire institution was guilty. They are STILL guilty for the utter botching of the post report handling of the issue.

WARNING: This post may contain material offensive to those who lack wit, humor, common sense and/or supporting factual or anecdotal evidence. All statements and assertions contained herein may be subject to literary devices not limited to: irony, metaphor, allusion and dripping sarcasm.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Originally Posted by psuasskicker

I hear this argument a lot from fellow Penn State friends of mine, that it really wasn't a football scandal. It makes me hang my head.

The biggest question I ask people is, "If McQueary walked in on a highly respected biology teacher in that shower, not a highly respected ex-coach, would we have heard about this in 2001, or in 2011?" IMO, clearly the answer is "2001." i.e. Paterno, Schultz, Curley and Spanier all would have agreed to alert the proper authorities, and while ugly for the university, it would have treated the situation correctly and not have shown any sort of institutional lack of controls.

That by definition makes it a football problem. The reason they didn't alert authorities was to protect the football program. The only other argument is if you claim that they wouldn't have reported anyone (like the bio prof). But flat out, I don't believe that.

- C -

Yes. Sad for sure.

The real life lesson for all of us should come from asking, what if? What if Paterno et al had simply acted appropriately? For starters, how many boys lives would have been saved? I suppose that question should be for starters and for enders. No reason to even consider beyond that tragic question.

But think about what really would have happened to the football team if Sandusky had been stopped at the first whiff of all this? Would the team have really been damaged when it was revealed their coordinator was a pedophile? I think not? Was the Carolina Panthers organization destroyed when it came to light what Rae Carruth did -- to pick a random comparison?

Why, Joe, why? Why defend the indefensible when you really had nothing to gain?

When will we learn that it's always that cover-up, not the original misdeed, that does the most damage? (R.I.P. Richard Nixon).

You tried to teach your kids at the earliest ages that they shouldn't lie. You teach them to admit their mistakes and above all else be honest.

It's sad that we have to talk about a man in his eighties who never learned this lesson.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

There are simply some PSU fans like yourself that will never rationally see the forest from the trees, unfortunately, which is reason enough to disband the football program for at least one season.

It's ironic to me that you claim I'm the one not thinking rationally about this. You still aren't actually addressing the issues at hand. Seriously, you expect us to take your argument seriously, yet you provide nothing in the way of rational argument when stating your thoughts on how this should be handled. Answer the questions I asked in a previous post...

1) How do you know that death penalty for a season will have the appropriate response (i.e. to force the institute to realize football isn't what's important here, safety of children is what's important) and ensure everyone will come to such realization?

2) How do you know that ONLY the death penalty for a season will ensure the appropriate response, as opposed to some other level of punishment?

Until you have actually come up with good answers to these questions, you cannot possibly make a claim that the death penalty is the correct response to this situation, particularly without balancing against the impact imposing such a penalty would have on other innocents tied to the program which you want to punish.

And I'm not asking for actual answers to those questions, btw. You (or anyone) can try if you want, but those questions are far deeper than any of us here can possibly hope to answer.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

The death penalty is important because as long as the institution continues to profit from the football program, the mentality will not change. Yeah, maybe the next time it won't be as egregious as what Sandusky did but the entire culture needs to shift drastically. Big time. Football is NOT Penn State and Penn State is NOT football and until that point has come across the problem isn't solved.

So one scum bag is in jail and another scumbag is dead rotting in hell somewhere. That's all well and good, but nothing changes. You should watch The Wire.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

Originally Posted by HoustonRaven

Enron become a liquidation company, selling off it's parts to other companies to settle the bankruptcy claim. Enron no longer exists and is most certainly was "burned to the ground", thanks to the volume of pay outs.

They did become a liquidation company, but the point was that no, it didn't just get burned down. Many of the portions of the company were sold off to other companies and still operate today. Enron in its known form no longer exists. But it's simply not accurate to say that the company was burned down...it was disbanded.

Originally Posted by HoustonRaven

I think you're parsing words when it comes to the claim "the entire institution is guilty". Nobody thinks the Bio-101 professor is guilty and should suffer directly. But when there are STILL people getting paid (sans Paterno, for obvious reasons) even though PSU is claiming the bad seeds have been removed, it's hard to argue anything other than the university, as an institution, is still doing the dirty deed of covering, ducking and jiving their way out of something of their own creation.

So yes, the entire institution was guilty. They are STILL guilty for the utter botching of the post report handling of the issue.

Even if you narrow it down to just talk about the football program and school executives, the "entire institution" STILL wasn't fully involved or guilty. There were other coaches and executives that didn't have any knowledge of this situation. Was it the heart of the university and football program? Of course, I don't argue that. Was it caused by an institution-wide attitude that the integrity of the football program was stellar and any impropriety would have a drastically problematic impact? Yes, I agree with that. I argue that it was NOT the entire institution, though.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

The "oppropriate response" in either case would be to make an example out of PSU in the hopes that no other school would let something like this happen.

Originally Posted by RavensNTerps

The death penalty is important because as long as the institution continues to profit from the football program, the mentality will not change.

Not good enough.

We don't live in a country where you dish out punishment and simply hope that it changes the attitudes of other people. There needs to be reasoning behind it. The appropriate response is not give the death penalty, hope other institutions heed the warning and hope something like this never happens again. You bring down punishment because you're certain that's what it takes to ensure PSU and other programs heed the warning and ensure nothing like this happens again.

You don't punish because you assume the mentality won't change without the death penalty. RNT, you can claim that as much as possible, but you have literally no idea
a) that the mentality will not change if they do not impose the death penalty, nor
b) that imposing the death penalty will in fact change that mentality.
Until you know both of those things, you can't make a reasonable argument for the death penalty.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

I would like to see PSU self sanction the football team. Obviously football and the power that the program had was the crux of the issues that lead to the situation. I don't think they should shut down the program for a year. Here some of the things they could do. 1. Petition the NCAA to let any current players transfer without having to sit out 1 year. Obviously the situation is not great for the current players. 2. Reduce number of scholarships by 5 a year for a 5 year period. Offer equivalent school schollies to kids of abuse. 3. Donate all bowl proceeds for the next three years to a charity for abused children.

At the same time they are sanctioning the football program release steps being taken to manager sports programs and coaches. Well Documented and publicized.

Re: The Freeh Report and the Future of Penn State

FWIW, no matter what sanctions get imposed, not just will not everyone be happy, but a majority of the people will think it's unfair. I have yet to hear one statement around what sanctions should be, where a majority of the people think it's the "right" answer.

No sanctions? PSU apologists are happy, most middle-of-the-road people are angry they got nothing, PSU detractors are pissed.
Death penalty? PSU apologists are pissed, most middle-of-the-road people are angry they got too hurt, PSU detractors are happy.
Something in between? PSU apologists are unhappy they got anything, most middle-of-the-road people are okay but most likely say "they should have gotten [more/less] because of [XYZ]," PSU detractors are unhappy they didn't get penalized enough.